


Please State the Nature of Your Emergency

by handschuhmaus



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: (Not really a) minor fix-it for the Romulan from Eye of the Needle, A Lonely Existence, Disturbing Themes, Episode: s01e03 Parallax, Episode: s01e04 Time and Again, Episode: s01e05 Phage, Episode: s01e07 Eye of the Needle, First Hug, Gen, Holographic Insubstantiality, Holographic Personhood, Nightmarish Imagery, Not Really Character Death, Note that this is not necessarily inconsistent with canon as of Eye of the Needle, Stranded, Temporal Paradox, The Author is Cruel, Unresponsive Ship's Computer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-11 05:25:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2055339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/handschuhmaus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kes is alone, and even when she finds the Doctor, he contrarily refuses to act like the person she knows he could be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Please State the Nature of Your Emergency

**Author's Note:**

> I literally just started watching Voyager, and have not seen past "Eye of the Needle". (For the curious, I've seen roughly as much DS9, assorted TNG including one of the last seasons, a little TAS, and about half of TOS. I've seen the '09 reboot but do not intend to write for it (that Chekov was the only thing about it I considered an improvement in any way probably speaks to my opinion on it, and I was not a great fan of TOS Chekhov), and besides I & IV, I forget which of the older movies I've seen.) Yes, I do like Star Trek as well as Star Wars! Actually Trek predates SW as an interest of mine, though it was preceded by Doctor Who by a month or two.
> 
> ...anyway, this fic was prompted by the demonstration in "Phage" of how the EMH, as a hologram, can be made insubstantial.
> 
> If the tags/warnings concern you, you might care to peak at the End Notes for a reassuring slight spoiler. Still, this tale might be disturbing due to inconsistent and terrifying imagery. It has a happy ending though.

Kes whipped her head around, frantically trying to orient herself. She was on the Voyager, she was in sickbay. But there was no one here. There was no one, she suddenly knew, on the ship at all; she was all alone--they had gone through the wormhole and left her behind--but why?

"Computer," she spoke, doubting her own senses, "where is Captain Janeway?" Janeway?! Why had she asked after the _captain_? She was, after all, only a sort of passenger. Why hadn't she asked after Neelix? Where was Neelix? Had he left her behind? Why?

The computer had made no response. "Computer?" she said tentatively, not allowing her panic into her voice. "Computer, activate Emergency Medical Hologram." Why was she saying that? If it wasn't responding... But having the Doctor would mean she wasn't alone.

"Computer, activate Emergency Medical Hologram." Nothing.

An insistant beeping, like a strangely familiar alarm, suddenly demanded her attention. She wheeled around.

Neelix! Lying on the medical bed, immobilized for the proper function of the holographic lungs and now gasping for breath. They must not be working properly. There was something -- had she dreamed that they found the aliens who had done this to him? Perhaps she had. But that was irrelevant. "Computer, activate Emergency Medical Hologram," she repeated desperately.

"Please state the nature of the emergency," the Doctor's voice, inflectionless, demanded of her.

"Neelix! You must help Neelix."

"You must be mistaken. There is no individual on this ship named Neelix." he pronounced dispassionately.

"Yes there is!" she was not sure what to do. Was this another computer malfunction? "Remember? Doctor, you must remember! We came on to _Voyager_ together."

"Are you hallucinating, miss? How long have your symptoms persisted?" he asked solicitously. Beginning to doubt her own senses, Kes looked again at Neelix to confirm that he was still there and in dire distress. He was, and the alarm sounded loud in her ears.

"Can't you hear the alarms?" she yelled at the EMH frantically.

"Alarms? Auditory hallucinations," the Doctor diagnosed thoughtfully.

Then the alarms stopped and she turned urgently, her stomach uneasy, to see what that meant for Neelix. Was he dead? Had he gotten better somehow? Neelix was lying on the bed motionless, pale and still as death, the medical gear that had just now surrounded him gone completely.

She turned back to the Doctor, "Is he dead?" in a voice thick and cramped with dread, for all the good it would do her. Either the computer was malfunctioning or the Doctor had been reprogrammed to ignore Neelix.

The hologram opened his mouth but she could not hear his words, if he said anything at all, because the alarm for a state of Red Alert had come on, drowning out other sounds.

"Doctor," she shouted, "Doctor, what are we going to do?"

"I am a hologram," he said, self-effacingly, "Please shut me off before you go."

"Doctor! You're a person, too. Isn't there anything in your programming that suggests something to do about this?"

"Please state the nature of the medical emergency," he instructed her perfunctorily.

"There is no--" but hadn't there been? Again she wheeled around, but there was no one there, and no one watching her, and then she was spinning uncontrollably like a maple seed and she had collapsed in the turbolift outside the bridge of _Voyager_.

"Janeway to Voyager, Janeway to Voyager. Chakotay, do you read me? _Voyager_?" came over the comm.

"Unknown ship, this is Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation Starship _Voyager_..."

Where were all these echoes coming from? No, not echoes, but they could not be from the same time... The main viewscreen flickered on unexpectedly and there was her explanation--a hundred other _Voyagers_ \--reflections or temporal echoes she couldn't say, and she didn't know what to do. Was this ship, the _Voyager_ she was on, even real? She had heard gossip about some omnipotent being who occasionally liked to make trouble for Starfleet--what if he or one like him had decanted out all the members of the _Voyager's_ crew out onto their own versions of the ship, and she only had the Doctor because the EMH went with the ship?

"Starfleet ship _Voyager_ , this is Romulan science vessel in Alpha Quadrant. I have passed on your messages and I wish to share a drink with you, Captain Janeway, Commander Tuvok. Please contact me when ready to beam over."

Kes erupted into hysterical tears. Didn't he know they were all--not there? She was alone and he was going to die--

"Why are you crying, my dear?" Neelix asked her kindly, standing there beside her on the bridge.

"We've got to get you back to sickbay! They took your lungs!" she explained, seizing his hand.

"They have?!" he asked in mild alarm.

She tugged him into the lift and it started without prompting. They left it at the proper deck and she started down the corridor in front of Neelix, only to come to an unfamiliar fork--and then realize that she'd left him behind somehow. They could meet up again at sickbay, though.

In sickbay, the Doctor was missing once again. "Computer, activate Emergency Medical Hologram," she instructed, not sure what good it would do.

"That function is not presently available," the computer announced calmly.

"Doctor?" She called nevertheless, hoping he would appear.

"Please state the nature of your medical emergency," he said wearily. "Did you finish the materials I gave you?"

He was acting more like the Doctor she had quickly come to like once again. "Yes, but that's not what I've come about." What had she come to sickbay for? Why couldn't she remember--?

"No," he said, busily calibrating a hypospray. "I expect not. You know, I'm not going to be around for you much longer."

"The power?" Kes gasped. No. She couldn't be all alone without even the EMH, and what if there wasn't enough energy to provide her with food?

"There is that," he agreed, and said as calmly as if he were discussing the weather. "But what I meant was that when the rest of the crew left, they created a temporal paradox that will make certain the voyager ship was never here. I won't be here without the ship."

Indeed, the walls and even the floor of Sickbay were beginning to become transparent--nothing at all like that dream experience on that one planet when she'd had the other dreams.

"But Neelix--?" she asked the Doctor. Oh, but the holographic emitter must have been one of the things to disappear, to succumb to the paradox, and the EMH was no longer there.

Yet--Neelix was again, whole, and bizarrely real for the ship to be sublimating into vacuum around them. Was he in danger too?

"Kes. Kes. What's wrong? Wake up," and his hand was on her shoulder, gently shaking here. There was a loud noise she did not think could have come from anything in the disintegrating sickbay.

"Kes. Open your eyes. It's just a nightmare. It's really just a dream," Neelix's voice sounded steady. And he spoke true, she soon realized, opening her eyes to the very solid walls of their quarters.

"I've got to go cook breakfast, but as soon as you get dressed, you come down and stay around people, after a dream like that."

She nodded agreement, though her mouth refused to form words just yet, and he lingered for a few minutes until she had arisen from bed, washed off her face, ordered a glass of water, and selected an outfit.

She dressed herself thoughtfully, but Kes did not quite obey the Talaxian's instructions.

Instead, she rushed to sickbay, bumping shoulders with a few crewmembers along the way, needing desperately to reassure herself that the Doctor was alive--well, was well, anyway. He was not presently active, but when she directed, "Computer, activate Emergency Medical Hologram," in a calmer voice, he appeared directly.

"Please state the nature of the medical emergency," he recited tiredly. "There isn't an emergency, is there?"

The EMH was quite taken aback, and Kes even startled herself a little, launching herself at him and wrapping her arms around him. The Doctor had never been hugged before, and embraces were not part of his programming, but since returning the gesture seemed expected and kind, he awkwardly put his arms around her back and stood still for a moment before saying anything.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm just so happy to see that you're alright--and functioning properly," she said, not wanting to relive even the scantest memories of the nightmare in order to explain it.

"Yes, I am functioning properly. I am not certain why you thought I might be otherwise."

**Author's Note:**

> ...it was all a nightmare, yes.
> 
> This was written all in one go fairly late at night and typed in in a hurry. I actually forgot to incorporate my original idea off the insubstantiality, which I might yet write up at some point. ;P
> 
> Who knew there was so much nightmare fuel in Voyager?
> 
> ...and um, I don't remember right now whether Kes and Neelix actually share quarters? But please excuse me if that's an error.
> 
> sheesh, there are a lot of "Computer, activate Emergency Medical Hologram" and variations on "Please state the nature of the medical emergency" and also a surprising number of " _Voyager_ "s to be italicized in here.


End file.
